HE WAS young, prodigiously talented and, more than that,
absolutely straight-up. Heath Ledger was a Hollywood star who
didn't play Hollywood games; he made the films he wanted and never
bothered sticking to the publicists' line in interviews. He had
nothing against the press, he said in his last Age interview
in Venice, because we were all being pushed around. "I'm a part of
a much larger machine and they are too. We're all part of the same
game. There are people running us all." And gave a little
snicker.

It was easy to warm to Ledger. He was, in fact, probably the
only actor who has ever waved at me like a long-lost mate across a
restaurant  from so far away, in fact, that I wrote him off
as some crackpot and didn't wave back. He always seemed pleased at
festivals to see an Australian face; the compatriots he liked got a
hug at interviews rather than the usual handshake. Talking to Heath
Ledger always felt like talking on the beach to the Perth surfer he
once was, even if we were actually in a hotel garden in Venice at a
table full of journalists from Belgium and Croatia.

A very nervous surfer, however. A bit below the laugh and chat
end of operations, he would shift awkwardly from one position to
another, hands occasionally gripping the seat; few actors are so
visibly uncomfortable under scrutiny.

He could hardly bear watching himself on screen, either, even in
his Oscar-nominated role as a gay cowboy in Brokeback
Mountain. "I wish I could do everything I'd done again. I'd
never see anything I'd done as a success. Ang Lee made a beautiful
movie, definitely, but I " he trailed off.

He wasn't always so phlegmatic about the attentions of the
press, either. I spoke to him most recently at the Venice Film
Festival last September, where he recalled how hard the paparazzi
experience had been when he was younger. "In your late teens, early
20s, you are just impulsive and rebellious and defensive. It is a
stage we all go through in our lives. But when that's being
documented and prodded and pried into, you get extra defensive. I
certainly found it very difficult trying to grow up with everyone
watching."

He laughed self-consciously then; Heath Ledger never liked
anyone to think he had tickets on himself. "Seemingly everyone," he
corrected himself. "It really isn't  nobody really cares, but
it feels like they do. And then eventually you get to the place
where you don't worry any more. It's tiring and there is little
point worrying about it, so you begin being a little more
diplomatic. But even if you're not in the public eye, I think you
can understand a need to keep close your personal life."

Ledger was in Venice promoting Todd Haynes' I'm Not
There. Two years after Brokeback Mountain, he had
successfully transformed himself into an art house actor with a
particular on-screen intensity. In I'm Not There, he was one
of six actors playing versions of Bob Dylan at seven different
stages of his life; Ledger was the Dylan of the Basement Tapes, a
brooding, cabin-bound family man locked away from the world, in a
typically inventive and considered performance.

He did think he was improving. Almost every interview with
Ledger included a moment's agonised reflection on the awfulness of
his attempts to act in his teens, both in his early films such as
Blackrock, in the television soap Home and Away and
the films he made after he went to Hollywood, such as 10 Things
I Hate about You, made in 1999 when he was 20.

"I suppose I felt I was kind of handed a career," he said after
he had made Brokeback Mountain. "I was given these silly
movies; they put my face on posters and pressure on my shoulders
I hadn't done anything. Nothing to prove myself, anyway. So
over the past four years I've been destroying the career that was
handed to me and creating one I've chosen. One that I feel I've
deserved."

After Brokeback, he tried even harder to choose parts
that were as different as possible from each other. "I need to make
errors," he said in Venice. "I like to choose roles that are either
going to be huge failures or huge successes of some kind, that are
going to be really challenging It takes so much out of you,
the period of time you commit to a character and story is so
taxing, being away from your family and friends, it just has to be
worth it."

So, while he was still stormed by doubts about his work, he
almost seemed to welcome them. "I can't say I'm proud of my work.
It's the same with everything I do: the day I say 'It's good' is
the day I should start doing something else." He never quite
believed he was an actor, apart from when he was doing publicity.
"But when I'm actually acting, I don't. I feel very alive. Very
natural. And that moment between 'action' and 'cut': it's a very
buzzy, strange yet consistent world you enter. Very freeing. I
don't know what you'd call that, but the red carpet, or this:
that's when I feel like an actor."

He admitted acting was therapeutic. "With emotions  anger
or hate, fury, hate, love or sadness  any of these things you
may be carrying around with you, you can just let it spew out!
That's fun. And it's addictive and part of what we have to give. I
don't like to call acting an art form  I don't think it is
 but on a personal level, that is our contribution to the art
piece." But he always wanted to be learning something: "Hopefully I
won't ever figure it out; I'll always be a student."

It is hard to square this determination with the current
speculation about whether he died by his own hand, depressed beyond
bearing. Professionally, at least, he was just hitting his stride.
Playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan's forthcoming Batman film,
The Dark Knight, was "the most fun he had ever had with a
part", he said. "I'm thoroughly enjoying it; it's exceeded any
expectations I've had. He's psychotic, he's a sociopath, a
bloodthirsty, mass-murdering clown. Chris Nolan has given me free
rein and hey, I'm running with it!"

He was also just about to start work with Terry Gilliam on
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, their second project
together after making The Brothers Grimm in 2005. Ledger
adored the eccentric former Python and was always keen to work with
him again. "I feel like the world is a better place with Terry in
it," he said while promoting Brothers Grimm. "Working with
him, his energy and passion to create is astounding It was a
six-month (shoot), including 115 days in Prague, and every one of
those days I went out to have the time of my life." The
Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus is still in production.

His personal life was another matter. When he met American
actress Michelle Williams on the set of Brokeback Mountain,
he described having met his matching half. "When it's true love, it
feels like something you're rekindling," he said in 2005, just
before their daughter was born. "As if you've met the person
before."

Two years later, they had split up. Still, he was often seen
squiring their daughter Matilda, now two, around toy shops and
teashops near his rented Manhattan loft. If he seemed less
self-conscious in Venice than he had before, he said, it was
probably because fatherhood had made him less concerned with
himself. "Suddenly you are concerned more about someone else. And
there is a part of you that retires."

1201024993905-theage.com.auhttp://www.theage.com.au/news/people/a-character-actor-with-character-in-a-pushy-world/2008/01/23/1201024993905.htmltheage.com.auThe Age2008-01-24A character actor with character in a pushy worldAs family, friends and fans come to grips with the tragic loss of
Heath Ledger, Stephanie Bunbury gives us a glimpse of the art-house
darling, new father and straight-up bloke.EntertainmentPeoplehttp://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2008/01/24/PM_sweat_narrowweb__300x226,0.jpg